So our first problem, our really essential problem, is to be free from fear. You know what fear does? It darkens the mind. It makes the mind dull. From fear there is violence. From fear there is worship of something.
The significance of life is living. Do we really live, is life worth living when there is fear, when our whole life Is trained in imitation, in copying? In following authority is there living? Are you living when you follow somebody, even if he is the greatest saint or the greatest politician or the greatest scholar?
Reply: Why do you ask me that question? Isn’t it true that as long as there is national division, economic division, racial division, religious division, there must be conflict. That is a fact. Right? Would you accept that?
That is a fact: we are violent human beings. From childhood we are brought up to be violent, competitive, beastly to one another. We have never faced the fact.
Why is there this division between man and man, between race and race, culture against culture? Why? Religions also have divided man, put man against man—the Hindus, the Muslims, the Christians, the Jews, and so on. This terrible desire to identify oneself with a group, with a flag, with a religious ritual, gives us the feeling that we have roots.